The Business World Changed, Didn’t You Get The Memo?

It’s enough to drive a regular IT market watcher to the point of despair. There has been a wide-ranging change in the way business operates driven by technology transformation — could there ever be a more obvious statement to make, ever?

The Business World Changed, Didn’t You Get The Memo?

how does all the data connect? Are the protocols, shapes, formats, identifiers and locators all changing (clue: yes, they are).

which technology base and platform does a firm build its own IT stack up from?

do we know why we are doing any of this in the first place?

Old school traditionalists

Traditionalists will still be fighting the move to IT-centric business systems, the cloud computing model of service-based IT delivery and the need to restructure their firm to be able to take advantage of what we now call data-driven decision making.

But the business world changed; didn’t these old traditionalists get the memo?

There are numerous reasons for moving to the cloud model and any one of them should arguably be justification enough for migration of some (if not all) elements of a firm’s IT base. There’s not a whole lot of fighting this truism, so there’s arguably not much arguably about it.

Cloud maybe first identified as a means of driving cost efficiencies or to bring a new more mobile-located workforce online.

Nobody wants to get locked out

But, equally, the advent of cloud for many firms may come about due to the IT strategies adopted by customers, partners or parent companies — or even subsidiary companies too for that matter. The business world changed and the impetus to move towards cloud-centricity may not always initiate internally.

The cloud model provides firms with the potential to shake up their business model enough to start developing new products. Equally, being locked out of one market and forced to look for new product development routes may be motivation enough for other firms.

Some cloud migrations will come about due to a firm’s clear decision to move towards a global shared services model. Equally it could come down to how business processes are executed.

Onboarding: add this word to your spellchecker

KPMG’s digital and mobile practice (a division acquired from Cynergy in early 2014) is using cloud-enabled mobile applications to help clients revamp the employee onboarding process, creating an improved mobile digital experience and adding a human touch to hiring.

Cloud yes, but why? It’s not just cloud for cost savings or even cloud for business efficiency… it is cloud for a new way of operating the business – and this is what matters here.

According to KPMG’s Elevating Business In The Cloud, onboarding isn’t just about processing paperwork for new employees, it’s about taking into consideration the needs of all the people involved in the process: new employees, hiring managers and HR professionals.

The firm now operates a customizable solution that claims to break down silos between different business roles and enable communication, keeping the new hires’ needs foremost in mind and radically changing the way we think about the onboarding process.

This is an example of why cloud. It’s not just cloud for cost savings or even cloud for business efficiency… it is cloud for a new way of operating the business – and this is what matters here.

Figures from 2014 (see graphic) show that firms adopt cloud for a host of reasons with faster time to market and the need to develop new data analytics intelligence also in the mix in addition to those drivers mentioned above.

Almost paradoxically then, as widely discussed as cloud is we still need to break down the why, what, where and when of how to move to cloud.

Here we have clearly focused on the WHY aspect predominantly and (at the risk of not being intelligently analytical enough) some of the that why reason is because the rest of the business world is changing… it’s almost like some firms didn’t get the memo, right?